I am totally against the death penalty because there is no remedy for mistakes. And it’s not like the justice system isn’t flawed. Since 1973 over 140 people have been exonerated and freed from death row. The most recent is Glenn Ford (No.144) on March 11, 2014.

In a press release sent May 3rd 2014 the Alabama NAACP is asking for a halt on executions in Alabama. Here’s an excerpt from that release:

The Alabama State Conference of the NAACP is calling on Governor Bentley and our State Legislators to adopt legislation that will put a moratorium on the death penalty in our state, said Benard Simelton, President of the Alabama NAACP and Esther Brown, Chair of the Alabama NAACP Death Penalty Moratorium Committee. We need a moratorium now to prevent the horrific spectacle of a botched execution, as took place in Oklahoma and shocked the nation, from happening in Alabama, they stated.

Closer to home, in an editorial in the Tuscaloosa News with the heading Execution Drug sources can’t be kept secret, the statement is made that “the majority of the state’s residents favor the death penalty, and the decision to continue it or abolish it should be determined by the people or by their representatives, not by judicial fiat."  Although the paper did come out against keeping the execution drugs secret, this idea of the will of the people is exactly the reason Alabama Governors like to use when they refuse to grant clemency.  And yet, the power to grant clemency is also an Alabama law, and therefore the will of the people.  And today is the majority really in favor of torture? Are we asking the right questions?  Or, are we allowing ourselves to be manipulated by those appealing to man’s understandable, but surely basest instinct of revenge?

 

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